Sunday, March 22, 2015

Brutalism with a Human Face. Case Studies of the Interior Architecture of Five NSW public buildings.

Michael BogleThe interior architecture of five selected NSW Brutalist civic-scale buildings from 1963-1978 is addressed through an analysis of interior planning, internal scale, lighting and materiality to identify and isolate the sensual elements in interior architecture the scholar Reyner Banham interprets as Brutalism’s “emotive” imagery. Working with the definitions established by Banham’s Brutalist essays and his interpretations of theAlison Smithson and Peter Smithsonpractice, the early definitions of Brutalism are used to differentiate between the Smithson-associated Brutalist variant of interior architecture and the interior work found in the five NSW Brutalist case studies. The interior architecture of the five selected NSW Brutalist civic buildings significantly expanded the “emotive imagery” Reyner Banham identified as characteristic of the first wave of Brutalist buildings initiated by the Smithsons’ early practice. These NSW case studies examples illustrate attempts to “bridge” through inventive interior architecture an identified gap “between the traditional ideal of beauty and theBrutalist image” raised by Anthony Vidier. These interiors demonstrate the evocation of sensual responses was a first order concern for the designers. Designing emotive “human associations” of rhythmic procession, light, texture, acoustics and interior ambience in this Brutalist interior architecture signals the architects’ desire to directly engage with the intimate “sense memories” of their audiences.Introduction

The interiors of the five selected NSW Brutalist civic
buildings from 1963 to 1978 reveal an inventive interior architecture exploring
and expanding the “emotive imagery” Reyner Banham first identified as
characteristic of Brutalist buildings in the mid-20th century. “What moves a
new brutalist,” he writes, “is the thing itself, in its totality, with all its
overtones of human association.” “… [An] image is what affects the emotions….”.[1]
While at odds with the general perceptions of NSW Brutalist off-form concrete
and brick buildings, the case study buildings demonstrate an interior architecture of“emotion”and sensuality intended to
activate the sense memories of the buildings’ audiences.

Using thediscussion and criteria established
by the central figure of Rayner Badham in his interpretation of Brutalism, five
case studies of NSW Brutalist interior architecture analyse the design
architect’s desire to engage with the intimate sensual elements of interior
architecture:

These selected examples of NSW Brutalist interior
architecture and the early photographic imagery of the commissions demonstrate
that enhanced sensual experiences were holistic design considerations for these
interiors. “An image,” Banham wrote, “is what affects the emotions, that
structure in its fullest sense is the relationship of parts…”.[2]
Imaginatively handled in these five commissions, an integrated palette of
materials and their evocative qualities of sound, sight and touch illustrate
that the pursuit of enhanced emotive experiences were integrated architectural
considerations in the design development of the interior architecture of these
buildings.

NSW pre-Brutalist Precursors

Prior to Ken
Woolley’s 1963 Lidcombe Hospital recreation hall and chapel, there are a number of civic-scale NSW pre-Brutalist
precursors in the early decades of the 20th century presenting innovations in
concrete construction, concrete finishes and interior lighting providing
synergies for later Brutalist interior architecture design and construction. These
technical advances are the refinement of on-site and off-site precast concrete
units for large-scale building elements; mechanical and/or hand-formed finishes;
experiments with aggregates and the development of fenestration strategies
suitable for concrete architecture.[3]

Amongst
these influential early pre-Brutalist developments were the architect Kevin
Curtin’s 1955 use of factory-manufactured precast hollow concrete beam infill panels
set into parabolic concrete arches for St Bernard’s Catholic Church, Botany.
This is a commission where Curtin applied smooth-rendered interior finishes
contrasting with exterior finishes of coat of black cement with an aggregate of
marble chips. This was a NSW innovation in material finishes that received
significant notice in the architectural press.[4]This was soon followed by H.P. Oser and
Associates 1957 experiment with precast wall panels with aggregates in
terra-cotta chips in white cement for the North Shore Hebrew Congregation, Lindfield.[5]

Ken Woolley’s pre-Brutalist building experiment with
concrete finishes, the 1959 Chapel for St Margarets Hospital, Surry Hills for
the NSW Government Architect was also an early exploration of surface finishes (see
Figure 9). It used tilt-slab, precast concrete panels with white quartz
decorative aggregate that drew on the earlier experiments of Kevin Curtin and
H.P. Oser. The circular chapel’s 36-panel concrete circumference was finished
with quartz aggregate introduced into white cement.[6]

Loder & Dunphy’s church architecture for the 1959 Methodist
Church, Caringbah and the 1959 Gosford Presbyterian Church also embraced the enthusiasm
for precast concrete construction to produce a series of vaulted churches with unusual
lighting effects from ground-to-roof fenestration typically restricted to the north
side of the sanctuary. This provided dramatic single-direction lighting effects
for the warm timber hues of the alpine ash interior cladding of the south side
of the auditoriums.[7]
Loder & Dunphy’s interior architecture of asymmetrical fenestration, timber
cladding, dramatic lighting effects, concrete finishes and architect-designed
sanctuary furniture was used for many of their church commissions.[8]

A number of pre-Brutalist NSW-wide civic-scale design experiments
by Curtin, Oser, Woolley and the church designs of Loder & Dunphy explored
dimensionality, the materiality of timber and aggregate finishes, colour and
sculptural form in this early pre-Brutalist concrete construction period. By 1963,
a major summary article in Constructional
Review was able to survey nationwide precast effects in colour and texture
including Perth, WA’s Rural & Industries Bank, with an exposed aggregate of
white quartz, red granite, glass and green marble.[9]
Some of these pre-Brutalist experiments were to become integrated architectural
considerations in the design of the interior architecture of the Brutalist
buildings under study.

Brutalism

Le
Corbusier’s images of North American grain elevators published in the original Vers Une Architecture of 1923 underpin the
architect’s emphasis on the importance of engineering for the designer.[10]
The grain elevators prefacing his discussion of “mass” presented no surprise to
Australian architects of the era who observed a NSW programme of ca. 200
elevators underway in the 1920s.[11]As the central figure in the
development of “Beton Brut”, the Le Corbusier‘s designs in concrete are expansive:
the proposals feature monumental expressions and great mass; they employ
graphic play of forms and spaces; the materiality is rough, almost savage; and the
architectural design features play with light, texture and colour.[12]
An Illustrated excerpt (referencing the ethos of grain elevators) from the first
English language translation of Le Corbusier’s book appeared in the Sydney publication
The Home in October 1928.[13]

Despite the ambitious NSW
grain elevator construction programme, structural concrete remained an
unfamiliar material for many design architects in the early decades of the 20th
century inhibiting the formal NSW design development of this material. The
engineering profession’s experience and guidance proved critical to architects
in the design and fabrication of the interior architecture of long-span
high-volume interior space, the placement and sizing of fenestration for
lighting, concrete materials handling (construction, forming, curing and the
use of aggregate materials in concrete design) and the exploration of finishes.

Banham, Brutalism and
Interior Architecture

Writing in the Architectural
Review from the perspective of the 1950s and 1960s, Reyner Banham became
the primary translator of the Brutalist design approach largely represented by
the practice of Alison Smithson and Peter Smithson. Banham argues for a British
genesis of the movement: “The New Brutalism […] became a programme, a banner,
while retaining some rather restricted sense as a descriptive label. […]”. In 1955
he admitted, “The New Brutalism eludes precise description, while remaining a
living force in contemporary British architecture.”[14]Although confessing the description of
“Brutalism” is elusive, he ventured an outline of its principal attributes.
Drawing on the examples available to him in 1955, he identifies several
elements that remained consistent in the decades that followed.

In his initial discussion Banham argues, “The form [of the
building] should be an immediately apprehensible visual entity” and concludes
with at least three characteristics of Brutalist building programmes.[15]They are:

Although there is no specific interior architecture vocabulary
employed in Banham’s earliest definitions of Brutalism, one may assume the terms
such as “memorability” and “as found” imply some form of sensual response to
the interior spaces. These issues are expanded and adjusted in Banham’s
illustrated 1966 volume The New Brutalism and re-appear in summary as:

In his return to the topic in the mid-1960s, Banham used more
emphatic phrasing. “The fundamental air of Brutalism at all times has been to
find a structural, spatial, organisational and material concept that is ‘necessary’
in this metaphysical sense to some particular building, and then express it
with complete honesty in a form that will be unique and memorable...”.[18]
“Brutalism, then,” he concludes, “is a tough-minded reforming movement within
the framework of modern architectural thought, not a revolutionary attempt to
overthrow it.” Of course, the highly politicised (reforming) Alison and Peter
Smithson practice was the foremost proponent of British Brutalism while Banham
was developing his essays. Consequently, his discussion chiefly responds to
their voluminous publications and built work.

During this same period, Banham also provided an entry on
Brutalism for the Encyclopaedia of Modern
Architecture. Now tasked for precision in a reference volume, he further sharpened
his definitions of Brutalist architecture proposing refined characteristics and
integrating a precise element of interior architecture for the first time with a
clarification that “Interior architecture compositions are also shaped by the
topography of internal circulation”.[19]
In summary, his Encyclopaedia entry defines
as follows:

1. Buildings display Brutalism of form, “ruthless honesty in
expressing the functional spaces and their interrelationships”;

2. There was an abandonment of symmetry;

3. Compositions often driven by the topography of the sites;

4. Interior architecture compositions are also shaped by the
topography of internal circulation.

The Smithsons and
Interior Architecture

Following
Banham’s earlier lead, October’s “New
Brutalism” issue of 2011 and Alex Kitnick’s introduction also locates the Smithsons at the centre of the British
movement and provides supplements supporting Banham’s early discussions,
notably the Smithsons’ stress on the use of materials, their embrace of
mass production and the diminution of handicraft in building and finishing.

As Banham had earlier discussed at some length, the
Smithsons were a highly polemic practice, Alison and Peter Smithson proposed a
transforming “… urbanism in which functionally compatible buildings, like the
components of a tea set, would acquire a kind of neutrality and family likeness
with the space between them becoming the collective of the spaces that each of
the buildings carries with it”.[20]
“It is […] respect for materials,” Alison Smithson writes,“a realisation of the affinity which can be
established between building and man, which was at the root of our way of
seeing and thinking about things that we called ‘New Brutalism’.”[21]The
urban architecture of the “New Brutalism”, however, left little room for
expressive interior architecture. As Anthony Vidier writes in his essay,
“Another Brick in the Wall, “In topological terms, formal properties [of the
Smithson’s architecture] could be described independently of size and shape…”.[22]
The Smithsons’ interiors were primarily “shelter”.

In discussing a house project in Soho in 1953, the Smithsons
reveal something of their reductive interior architecture design approach. “It
was decided to have no finishes internally, the building being a combination of
shelter and environment. Bare concrete, brickwork and wood.” This approach is
described by Alex Kitnick in his introduction to the October Brutalism issue as a “warehouse aesthetic”. [23]
The Smithson’s economic specification for the architectural documentation
stated, “It is our intention in this building to have the structure exposed
entirely, without internal finishes wherever practicable. The construction
should aim at a high standard of basic construction as in a small warehouse.”[24].
By “no finishes”, one assumes “no worked or applied finishes”.

The Smithsons’ “no finishes” was to become an commonplace descriptor
of Britain’s postwar “ferroconcrete fortresses”, as Owen Hatherly identifies in
a “politicised critique” on Brutalist architecture and urbanism, Militant Modernism.[25]
His chapter, “The Brutishness of British Modernism” describes Britain as“the first country in the world to
industrialise, [thereby] fetishing hardness, dynamism, scale and rough edges”.[26]
Hatherly insists that British Brutalist architecture “centres on the street” to
create a “new urbanism” for the working classes; the interior was little more
than a mass housing “package”.[27]
His observation correlates with the Smithson’s lack of attention to interior
architecture.[28] The
Brutalism defined by the Smithsons displays little interest in sensual enhancements
of the elements of interior architecture, preferring to design civic-scale architecture
directed toward the urban community, the street and the elemental provision of shelter
for a war-scarred Britain.

Australian Brutalism

Locally, urbanism, social reform and the Smithsons’ well-known
“streets in the sky” were lower-order concerns as the British Brutalist design
approach wound its way through Australian institutional architecture for
schools, government precincts and other public institutions.

Beginning as early as 1960, a survey of major Australian
civic Brutalist buildings illustrates this architectural approach was embraced
by Commonwealth, state and territory governments who commissioned Brutalist
works through their respective government architects, public works departments
or construction ministries.[29]The Brutalist approach became what Professor
Philip Goad calls a “state sanctioned style”.[30]
His 2014 paper “Bringing
it all back home” reminds the reader of the
Brutalist lineage for Australian architects’ experience in the British milieu
of commercial and civic practice in the 1950s and 1960s. He identifies a
number of NSW architects with placements in the London County Council and
British architectural firms active in Brutalist postwar housing, particularly amongst the architects who took up
positions in the NSW Government Architects Office.[31] Amongst these travellers was Ken
Woolley (NSW Government architect’s office ca.1954-1963) who took a position in
the London practice Chamberlin Powell & Bon in 1956-1957 as they were completing
their designs for the Brutalist “Golden Lane” housing competition and
initiating their studies for the celebrated Brutalist Barbican Estate, London.[32]

Australian publications were also surveying British Brutalism in the trade
press, notably in the pages of Constructional
Review published (first issue 1927) by the Cement & Concrete Association of Australia; the
Association also organized conferences, lectures and seminars promoting
concrete construction.The Master Builders’
Federation journal, Building, Lighting,
Engineering, also covered European projects and gave prominence to Australian
commercial-scale concrete design and construction. The Smithsons and Brutalism
philosophy in Britain would have been equally familiar to contemporary
Australian architects in the 1950s and 1960s through Rayner Banham’s critical
writing in the Architectural Review
and his books, Guide to Modern
Architecture (1962) and the New Brutalism (1966) from their publishing house, the
Architectural Press. Banham was well known in Australian architectural circles
and gave the opening address for the 1962 RAIA convention in Sydney and chairing
several discussion sessions during the conference.[33]

In a nation-wide assessment of Australian Brutalism, the 2012
Encyclopaedia of Australian Architecture
entry prepared by Professor Geoffrey London also confirms the importance of the
Smithsons’ ethical framework and accepts the core of Banham’s definition of
Brutalist architecture as constituting buildings in concrete with axial plans,
as-found finishes and clarity of structure with the whole expressed with honesty.[35]
Banham’s “Brutalism [as] a tough-minded reforming movement within the framework
of modern architectural thought” is not considered.[36]

London begins his
Encyclopaedia discussion of Australian Brutalism by citing the Victorian work
of Graeme Gunn (Plumbers and Gasfitters Union building, 1970), Kevin Borland
and Daryl Jackson’s Harold Holt Swimming Centre (1969) before introducing some
of the West Australia’s earlier Brutalist works notably, the Hale School Memorial Hall, Perth by Marshall
Clifton and Tony Brand (1961) and the Bentley campus of the Curtin University
of Technology (1970).[37] Although London chose not to directly reference
Brutalist works in Tasmania, South Australia, NSW and Queensland, his
discussion of the 1961 Hale School Memorial Hall, Perth positions it as one of
the earlier formal Brutalist civic-scale buildings in Australia suggesting a
potential 1961 birth date for Australian Brutalism.[38]

The NSW Government’s enthusiasm for concrete construction
had little association with the lofty aesthetics and ethics of Banham and the
Smithsons. Commenting on opening of the Brutalist Hornsby Technical College of
1968, a spokesperson for the NSW Government Architect said stated plainly that
the “as found” off-form finishes of Hornsby Technical College were selected not
because of any fashion for “brut” concrete but because years of school and
college maintenance has shown the Government Architect the value of upkeep-free
materials.[39]

As an alternative to the British social programme
architecture initiated by the Smithsons’ work, Goad suggests that the wave of
émigré architects from Europe (a surge in European immigration beginning in NSW
in the 1930s) also introduced “unadorned
materials (invariably off-form concrete), figurative elements, and expressive
structure” into the vocabulary of Australian Brutalism.[40]But with the exception of an internal position for the
Berlin-trained Anatol Kagan and external commissions to the émigré Harry
Seidler for a 1967 “Streets in the Sky” Housing Commission complex in Rosebery,
émigrés rarely found design architect positions in the NSW Government
Architect’s Office where Brutalism thrived, perhaps through their difficulties
in NSW architectural registration.[41]

Unadorned Materials?

While Banham and the Smithsons consistently reference
“unadorned materials”, descriptive passages in the Australian professional
literature of NSW Brutalist buildings identify and demonstrate the considerable
attention given to emotive interior architecture. This enthusiastic exploration
of the sensual elements of interior architecture illustrates that interiors
were a first-order concern in the development of NSW Brutalism. There are
generous descriptions of carefully worked concrete finishes, timber and tile
cladding, dramatic lighting, colour and architect-designed furniture in NSW
Brutalist buildings. To explore this contradiction between the “unadorned”
aesthetic defined by Badham and the “enhanced” interior architecture of NSW
Brutalist, five civic-scale building commissions (1963 to 1978) are selected for
interior architecture case studies.

These buildings were selected as exemplars of the extensive
detailing of NSW Brutalist interior architecture through processional planning,
the design of interior scale, the design management of natural and artificial
light and the exploration of materiality. The buildings are documented with
photographs taken during the early years of the buildings’ lives and many of
them have been heavily modified since opening.

Processional Planning

The five NSW Brutalist case study buildings under
investigation are civic structures requiring high capacity public spaces. The
design emphasis for interior planning frequently centres on processional
entrances and reception areas that provide an orientation for internal communication
of the interior architecture scheme. The dynamism of this processional topography
is a major feature in the 1967 Stafford, Moor and Farrington-designed Macquarie
University Building E7; David Turner’s 1971 Stage 1 multi-purpose building for the
William Balmain Teachers College (Now UTS-Ku-ring-gai, Stage 1) and the
Joseland, Gilling and Associates 1978 Masonic Centre (Stage 1), Sydney.[42]

After the processional entrance of these three buildings, one
immediately encounters a traditional Brutalist homage to Le Corbusier (see Figures 4, 5, 7) in the interiors of Macquarie
University’s 1967 Building E7, the 1971 UTS Ku-ring-gai Stage 1 and the 1978 Masonic
Centre (Stage 1) through their common use of large-scale internal site-formed
cantilevered concrete stairs with cast concrete balustrades, ramp-like concrete
structures (often concealing traditional tread-and-riser stairs) and in the
case of the Masonic Centre (Stage 1) , a self-supporting spiral stair that dramatically
rises to several levels within the entry foyer. These cantilevered stairs and
ramps in each commission immediately introduce large-scale sculptural effects and
provide opportunities for the play of light and deep shadow earlier evoked in
Le Corbusier’s Vers Une Architecture.

David Turner’s UTS Ku-ring-gai Stage 1’s interior
architecture is an example of a clustered organisation plan with dynamic circulation and processional
patterns. The Constructional Review criticised
Turner’s processional planning in a review article on UTS Ku-ring-gai
Stage 1, observing the
processional “planning is based on activity zones which […] divided the
building into a series of wings separated by small courts spanned sometimes by bridges
[…]. Internally and externally,” they wrote, “variety in form and treatment is
not lacking.”[43]

Macquarie University’s 1967 Building E7 interior
architecture is planned on a grid formed from internal volumes linked by a
roofed courtyard enclosing an internal stair ascending to two levels. Colonnaded
internal passages surrounding this courtyard (Figure 4) lead to classrooms and
laboratories. The formal processional character of the inner passages and the grand
scale of the interiors have encouraged its ceremonial use by the university.

The Joseland, Gilling and Associates 1978 Masonic Centre
(Stage 1) was also a building (now much modified) with grand scale foyers of
two-storey and three-storey internal volume linked by the considerable scale of
the Masonic Centre’s auditorium (The Grand Temple) and associated meeting
rooms. The processional organisation extends no further into the building.

Alternatively, the ground plans of Ken Woolley’s 1963
Lidcombe Hospital recreation hall and Michael Dysart and Peter Webber’s 1965
Robb College, University of New England are large-span interior spaces that are
immediately legible without no more than a functional spatial processional
pathway with the principal entrance leading to the central spaces.

The large span Brutalist interiors made possible with the
strength of reinforced concrete produced Piranesi-dimensioned Brutalist interiors with bold, exaggerated
internal volumes. In Australia, wide-span European concrete work was regularly
discussed and illustrated in the Sydney-based journal Building and the Constructional
Review as early as 1930. European 20th century innovative concrete-formed interior
architecture drew on the concepts developed by bridge technology engineers such
as Eugene Freyssinet received considerable local attention.[44]Max Berg’s celebrated 1911 concrete
constructed Centennial Hall, Breslau, Poland, for example, was being shown and
described in the Australian trade journal Building
in 1932.[45]
The Australian Cement Company, Melbourne in the mid-1930s, also used Berg’s
celebrated hall in full-page advertisements insuring Australian architects
could observe the potential of reinforced concrete.[46]

In Macquarie University’s Building E7, Stafford, Moor and
Farrington harnessed the strength of concrete construction for their roofed
courtyard (see Figure 4) with its span of 22 metres. Their internal courtyard encloses
a Le Corbusier-derived cantilevered internal stair ascending to two levels as
well as colonnaded internal passages leading to classrooms and laboratories.
The grand scale of the interior courtyard features a shared alignment with the
processional surroundings of classrooms and laboratories.

Alternatively, Joseland, Gilling and Associates’ Masonic
Centre narrows the potential entrance span of their Goulburn Street entrance
foyer to design an internal foyer space (see Figure 5) rising to three
levels inside the slightly recessed entrance. Their Masonic Centre (Stage 1) entrance
is equally notable for the monumental-scale concrete columns supplying internal
lift-wells for circular-shaped lift-cars. Much of the building’s flamboyant internal
volume is used to provide a column-free 24-metre span in the upper level where
the interior architecture is centred on the Masonic Centre’s timber-clad
auditorium.

The initial
Stage 1 building for the William Balmain Teachers College, Lindfield (now UTS Ku-ring-gai,
Stage 1) was the first civic building on the Ku-ring-gai site and as the
principal building, was assigned multiple functions. The building’s entrance
height aspires to grandeur (see Figure 5) where a Le Corbusierian ramp-enclosed concrete stair leads to a
mezzanine in the fully glazed entrance foyer. The complex planning of
the Stage 1 interior
architecture has character but forced to serve several functional masters, the
fragmented interlocking plan cannot achieve the scale suggested by the building’s
exterior (see Figure 8).

Light and
lighting provide some of Brutalism’s greatest problems in interior architecture.
Developing planning withthe Le Corbusier’s “rue interieure” concepts so much emulated
by the Smithsons in their “streets in the sky” can produce what a University of
Melbourne-published 1969 edition of Cross-Section
described as “the New Gloom”. The massive spans afforded by concrete
construction are a challenge for fenestration and scale. The hues and
reflectance of concrete and the manganese-coloured bricks favoured in NSW
Brutalism are also a limiting issue for interior architecture. Dependent on the
concrete mix, aggregate and finish used, the typical colour of concrete has a
low light reflectance and combining this poor reflectance rating with a roughed
concrete surface, reflectance is further reduced. For the exterior of an
Australian Brutalist building, this can be desirable but for interior
architecture, it often proves an intractable problem.[47]

In keeping with their early 1950s Brutalist stance of
“modernism without rhetoric”, the Smithson’s responded to direct questions
about natural lighting in their buildings by commenting with mocking irony on
their proposed domestic commission in Soho in 1953, “The air and sunlight of
the attics in the daytime suggests that living quarters should be up top, with
the bathroom in the cool dim basement.”[48]
Their interior architecture, of course, managed light, but in their early
writings they failed to engage directly with the technical and theoretical
issues of lighting. Some years later, as their practice evolved, they began
making careful site studies of light and climate in the 1970s.[49]

Stafford, Moor and Farrington’s Macquarie University
Building E7 was critiqued by Melbourne University’s Cross-Section’s editorial staff writing of the light effects in
brick and concrete Brutalist interiors, noting that previously “one important
aspect of the modern movement has been an obsession with a “white light” effect
in interiors. […]Whether it is by
intention or accident a new sort of light appears to be emerging in modern
architecture displacing the modern movement’s white light. This “New Gloom” […]
goes hand in hand with brick and concrete in a natural condition…”[50]

The architect’s earlier light-handling innovation reverberates
in his 1962 Brutalist commission for the Recreation hall and chapel, Lidcombe
State Hospital (Figure 11) where capturing and distributing natural light
presented design challenges for the auditorium. In this Brutalist brick and concrete
Recreation Hall and Chapel, Ken Woolley continued his development of light
effects withnarrow vertical
fenestration set into elevations of concrete-capped pleated brick walls supported
from off-form concrete bases supporting the brick walls.[52]

When viewed from the rear of the hall, the pleated brick
walls of the interior architecture conceal the vertical fenestration that casts
light toward the stage. An altar backed by a white-painted masonry wall terminates
the internal vista with a “trompe l’oeil” light source flooding from several
angles (figure 11). Typical of much NSW Brutalist interior architecture, the dramatic
contrasts of light and shadow, the dark brickwork and the internal tallowwood timber
cladding and floor are pre-eminent features. Similar fenestration concepts were
used on a larger scale for Michael Dysart and Peter Webber’s 1965 Robb College,
University of New England, Armidale.

New England basalt and concrete are the primary materials of
Michael Dysart and Peter Webber’s 1965 Robb College, University of New England
Armidale. The building is a residential college of the University and the two-storey
Robb College dining block is the social and architectural centre of a pinwheel cluster
of four residential college buildings.[53]
Internally, the dining hall is the core of the building with a second level providing
rooms for administration. The roof slab is formed from boarded off-form vaulted
concrete slabs supported by native basalt walls (Figure 12) laid as random
rubble. The exterior overhang of the vaulting is generous, throwing deep shadow
over the walls and the shallow Roman-arched fenestration. The intense reflected
sunlight of this region fans across the internal vaulting to cast strong
shadows. Like the earlier Woolley Recreation Hall and Chapel, the textural
effects of raking sunlight evoke a strong romantic element of the power of the
sun, illuminating the internal roughcast textures and natural materials.

At Macquarie University, natural light for the building’s
core is managed with a glazed atrium in Stafford, Moor and Farrington’s
Building E7 while the internal colonnades that surround the space alternate in
light and shadow throughout the day. The play of light enlivens the space
during clear days but during overcast periods, like so many Brutalist
buildings, the deep shadows and light-absorbing surfaces need supplemental
lighting. The surrounding classrooms and laboratories around the inner
courtyard are fenestrated with large windows to the south while to the north; the
glazing area is reduced to a minimum.

David Turner’s UTS Ku-ring-gai Stage 1 building introduces internal lighting through
a series of internal light shafts, courtyards and terraces overlooking the
bushland setting. Direct sunlight is modulated by precast visors (“sunshields”),
precast louvres and deep overhangs concentrated on the north, south and western
elevations. The building’s controlled views and vistas were further
complimented by the architect’s original use of green carpeting that provided green-tinted
reflected internal light to complement the celebrated landscape architecture of
Bruce McKenzie and Associates.

With the interior architecture case study buildings, the
managing of light in the Joseland, Gilling and Associates’ Masonic Centre
(Stage 1) was the more extreme. Disadvantaged by a dense urban siting and
client requirements, the extreme overhang of the building’s upper levels (see
Figure 6) and the small footprint of the podium forced the practice into an intensive
artificial lighting programme. The Masonic Temple uses a range of lighting
fixtures such as wall-mounted and floor-mounted up-lights that enhance
textures, provide marked effects of light and shade as well as reflected
ambient light. Their strong raking light throws the variable textural effects
of the roughcast and bush-hammered concrete surfaces into sharp relief
providing marked theatrical effects.

Materiality

The Smithsons wrote of their 1953 house commission in Soho that
the composition was “bare concrete, brickwork and wood” but while off-form or
as-found concrete remained at the centre of Smithson-inspired Brutalism design,
a palette of supplemental materials emerged in NSW interior architecture to
ameliorate the colour, textures and acoustical criticisms often levelled at the
starkness of concrete-construction interiors. These materials included an
extensive use of timber, conventional brick in a range of colours and textures,
floor treatments and a variety of surface finishes.[54]

In these NSW commissions, timber was often employed in decorative
timberwork, roof trusses or internal cladding for the management of acoustic problems,
particularly reverberation issues. The natural colours and textures of timber
also helped counter some of the commonplace complaints about the “coolness” of Brutalist
interior architecture. Extensive applications of rough-sawn and/or finished
timbers in their natural state appeared in Woolley’s flooring and the elaborate
tallowwood truss system for the roof plan of the 1963 Lidcombe Hospital
recreation hall. Timber was also used for wall cladding, parquetry flooring and
interior door detailing of the 1965 Robb College dining hall. Michael Dysart
also designed the complementary tallowwood timber furniture for the dining hall
and the Commons areas. The Masonic Centre auditorium (initially described as a
banquet hall) was generously clad with light-hued timber panelling that enhances
the hall’s acoustical performance.

Structurally, textured brick was favoured for concrete
infill work (often purple-tinted manganese-enriched dark brick) for these works.
Brick infill was an important structural and decorative element for UTS
Ku-ring-gai Stage 1, Macquarie University’s Building E7 while the Recreation
hall and chapel, Lidcombe State Hospital was primarily brick construction with
concrete detailing. Stone had some alternative applications. The Masonic Centre
used decorative detailing of imported travertine marble for stairs and a door
portal detailing (Figure 14) while regionally quarried basalt was the main construction
material for the Robb College dining hall.

Robb Hall used locally quarried basalt for the supporting
random rubble-laid walls. Internally, the walls were left unfinished with only
the contrasting mortar pointing relieving the sombreness of this dark grey
stone. Michael Dysart and others has spoken of a discussion described as a
“Manifesto of Natural Materialism” thriving within the NSW Government
Architect’s Office in the early 1960s. Although Dysart has suggested that the
manifesto was somewhat whimsical, he insists “there was an element of
seriousness in the jest and in my case, that materials should be true to their
nature and reflect the language of construction reality.”[55]

This expanded palette of materials in these NSW Brutalist studies
enhanced and humanised the interior architecture of concrete. Within the concrete
material, however, there is also a wide range of aggregates, mixing methods, colours
and finishes for the architect to explore. Within the Australian periodical
literature on concrete there has been an extensive discussion of concrete
finishes for these NSW architects to draw upon. Features on finishes appeared
in Australia’s Constructional Review
as early as 1940. A 1941 feature sponsored by a Tasmanian cement manufacturer
illustrated rough-sawn timber off-form finishes, thoughtfully suggesting “The
rough, coarse, rugged texture [is] suitable for a building of large scale and
normally viewed from a distance…”.[56]

Fifteen years later, C.P. Sorensen from the Commonwealth Experimental Building Stationargued in the Constructional
Review that concrete finishes “provide a rich range of colours and textures
not available in any other material”.[57]Citing British and American sources in his
report for the Commonwealth Experimental Building Station, he illustrates
tooled finishes exposing crushed brick aggregate and scraped finishes. He
concludes, “Excellent finishes may [also] be obtained off-the-form”.

Compared to the off-form concrete finishes employed by David
Turner, Ken Woolley and the Michael Dysart and Peter Webber commission, the raking
light programme of the 1978 Masonic Centre (Stage 1) reveals the dramatic chiaroscuroeffects employed by the architects for mechanical bush-hammered
finishes and/or off-form textures. Bush-hammering is used on the lift shafts
and the walls immediately flanking the entrance to differentiate their structural
roles. The grand scale and the variety of the Brutalist concrete textures
employed at the Castlereagh Street entrance (see Figure 14) are also enhanced
by a sawn travertine marble door portal and travertine accents on the treads of
the processional stair.[58]

Conclusion

In NSW, the interior architecture of the five selected
Brutalist civic buildings demonstrates inventive design that expanded the
“emotive imagery” Reyner Banham sought to identify as characteristic of the
first wave of Brutalist buildings initiated by the Smithsons’ early practice.
“What moves a new brutalist,” he writes, is an emotive image.[59]
This is Banham’s “Memorability of image”.[60]Vidier’s
commentary on Banham considers that he sought “… to constitute the Brutalist
image asone continuous whole from brick to building.
Further, [this] also allowedfor the bridging of the
gap between the traditional ideal of beauty and theBrutalist image…”
of raw concrete and as-found finishes.[61]

These five NSW case study examples illustrate attempts to “bridge” this gap
between beauty and the familiar image of Brutalism through inventive interior
architecture. These interiors demonstrate the evocation of sensual responses
was a first order concern for the designers. Designing emotive “human
associations” of rhythmic procession, light, texture, acoustics and interior
ambience in this Brutalist interior architecture signals the designer’s desire to
directly engage with the sensuality or “sense memory” of the audience.

With these spaces, the senses of the body are activated. Movement
through the atmosphere of this interior architecture is an acoustically active
experience with the concrete surfaces, timber cladding, tiled or timber floors
and inner volumes providing an acoustically liveliness. Many of these
structures, the Masonic Centre, Macquarie University’s Building E7 and Ken
Woolley’s Lidcombe Hospital hall have served (and continue to serve) as performance
spaces.

The materiality of off-form or textured-finish concrete with
its rough, “almost savage” texture evokes an intense tactile response found in
few other materials. Whether the material is touched or not, the sense memory responses
of the surfaces are highly emotive and when these concrete textures are
juxtaposed with travertine, tallowwood or high-fired brick, the effect is
magnified. These carefully planned textural effects are further enhanced by the
use of raking natural and/or introduced light programmes

The play of light in Brutalist interior architecture is one
of Brutalism’s most imaginative effects. The deep dramatic shadows that often
accompany the use of light-absorbing and light-diffusing concrete have provided
to be a delight for the celebrated photographer Max Dupain and his fellow black-and-white
photographers. These same sombre shadows provide an extra dimension for the play
of the imagination providing interior “atmosphere” or ambience for the
interiors.

These selected examples of NSW Brutalist interior
architecture demonstrate that enhanced sensual experiences were holistic
considerations for Brutalism. “An image,” Banham wrote, “is what affects the
emotions, that structure in its fullest sense is the relationship of parts…”.[62]
Imaginatively handled, the palette of materials and their evocative qualities
of sound, sight and touch illustrate that integrated emotive experiences were holistic
architectural considerations in the design development of these buildings.

ends / March 2015

Many thanks to Kerrie Barron, Information Services Officer, Cement Concrete & Aggregates Australia, Mascot NSW for generous assistance with images from Constructional Review. Gratitude is also expressed for the comments from the anonymous readers of the original manuscript.

[3] Off-site concrete construction for prefabricated structures has a long history in Australia. Miles Lewis, 200 Years of Concrete in Australia. Concrete Institute of Australia, 1988 is the standard reference.

[11] An ambitious schedule for 200 elevators (silos) in the NSW rural areas was underway in the 1920s. Grain Elevators Board of NSW. 50 Years of Bulk Grain Handling in NSW (Grain Elevators Board of NSW 1972): 6. This booklet provides a dated inventory of the elevators constructed under this programme.

[25] Will Self. “It hits in the gut.” Review of Hatherley’s Militant Modernism and A Guide to the Ruins of Great Britain. London Review of Books (8 March 2012): 23-24. While the Smithsons were a “reforming” practice, Self is critical of Hatherley’s “polemic” position.

[34] Martin Filler. “The Hard Case of Paul Rudolph.” New York Review of Books (5 February 2015) 34-36. (Review of T.M. Rohan, The Architecture of Paul Rudolph; Chris Mottalini, After You Left, They Took It Apart. Rudolph was a classmate of Harry Seidler at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

[37] The Victorian architect Daryl Jackson worked for the American Paul Rudolph’s practice in the early 1960s. Keith Dunstan. “The Moving Finger of Daryl Jackson Writes.” Canberra Times, Good Weekend. (28 February 1986) 28.

[38] A domestic-scale Brutalist architecture, colloquially described as “Nuts and Berries” (alternatively, “the Sydney School”) also emerged in NSW in the 1960s.

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About Me

Specialist in the "life and times" of the Australian modernist architect Arthur Baldwinson (1908-1969) who was active from 1937 to 1969 and his milieu. My RMIT dissertation argues that Baldwinson and a limited circle of NSW and Victorian architects began to shape an Australian "regional modernism" in the 1930s. This argument runs counter to the creation myths of the "Sydney School" of modernism. Active in DAAO website focussing on designer and designers. Currently compiling DAAO listing of designers, makers and serial manufacturers of Australian furniture.